The Song I'm in Love with

Some songs simply leave you asking for more.

I've listened to Agnee before, in fact, at present they are among very few of the Indian rock (or any category) bands in India whom I love to listen to but I don't know how I missed this one particular song. Got to hear it for the first time yesterday and, well, I've not been able to give my ears a rest. I hope anyone who happens to listen to this enjoys it as much as I have.

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Remembrance of Things Past

That translucent alabaster of our memories
Marcel Proust "The Captive," Remembrance of Things Past(1929).

Memory

Chapter 1

Grandma's Garden

After a very long time I stumbled upon the long (but not definitely lost) memory of my grandma's garden (my papa's aunt) sprinkled with tiny yellow flowers (they were my favourite), the haystacks that were left by the side of the pond. The fields when they were green(and yellow), my best summer days spent, till date. The memories are not lost but the very things which formed my memories, have travelled far beyond the time and space they were meant to traverse. There are no yellow flowers now. When I look back, I think they were not even flowers, I mean not planted or anything, just wild growth that somehow found its way to be a part of the garden that was never meant for it. I can find no haystack (there needs to be hay first) and no green field (because there's no more farming).

Chapter 2

Cousins' Quarter

Courtesy
I remember the early morning stroll my cousins and I used to take only so that we can witness the rising sun and to blow the drops off the dewy grasses. The continuation of the day dreams with a nap on that very dewy fields. The unending conversations about everything mundane with a toothbrush in our hands. I remember running around the vast playground of the quarters where my cousins used to stay. The old, uninhabited ghostly quarters whose only constant visitors were the three of us (F, D and I) trying to find out hidden treasures/leftover troves of some kind. We practically broke in. Locks and latches were of no hindrance at all.

They left this place long, long way back. Those days have vanished, gone, evaporated to dimness even in my memories so much so that I usually never recall them. Sometimes it is hard to believe that all of these (and many more fantabulous incidents) did happen. These memories are neither fictitious nor coloured. They were so much better than fiction.

I want to read Proust. I have to read Proust.
(These passages are episodes from MY life and not excerpts of the book with the same name as the title of my post )

Summer reading list:

1. When Dreams Travel - Githa Hariharan

2. The Motorcycle Diaries - Ernesto Guevara

3. Tales from 1001 Arabian Nights - Richard Burton

P.S:

All my friends here, I would be happy if you can suggest me some films to watch- your favourites or films which you think is something one should not miss.

Have a fabulous week ahead.

CINEMA PARADE

This is an unplanned post.

Blame my laziness or may be something more sublimely intricate, but its getting difficult to get the words hovering around my head to bring within a mental frame of reference. Like the tiny winged arthropods looming all over, it's getting harder to tame. (No reference to the Obama-Fly Swat whatsoever)

Have watched a parade of cinema, Have resumed the reading spree with Orhan Pamuk's Snow. (Oh! I HAVE to read him more).

I'm an ardent Michel Gondry admirer. At last got to watch his "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". This title has been taken from Alexander Pope's "Eloisa to Abelard". After a long time a film made me happy, I mean a certain uncertain kind of happiness. There is a Joel and Clementine everywhere we look at. Things never change, being forgetful or trying to become one only expedites the entire emotional exercise. The anti narrative format of storytelling leaves one feeling so unsymmetrically wonderful indeed. The things we do feel happening (to) inside us but that never gets visually exemplified, gets a life here. At first I was a bit queasy about watching someone as hilarious as Jim Carrey in a supposedly serious avatar(not accounting The Truman Show) but I was thankfully wrong this time.

My next watch was Almodovar's Volver. I always presumed I would like Pedro Almodovar, I don't know why, but I simply knew. I had a difficult time deciding which one to start with - All About my Mother or Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, or Bad Education. I finally zeroed in on Volver and I was rewarded with a satisfying experience like no other. A bright colourful film portraying women of three generation battling life and it various other encumbrances in the most effervescent way ever.

The third memorable watch being the Oscar winner "The Lives of Others" . I won't attempt to write anything about it, its worthy a watch (or may be more). Brilliant.

And, yes I'm currently taken with this song by Beck (also a part of the soundtrack of Danny Boyle's utterly forgettable "A Life Less Ordinary").

I'm in love with images but not getting enough of them (if only I was able to capture every beautiful moment occuring at all the accidental intervals).

I'm discovering jazz music from the past.

Jazz is beautiful, for melancholic evenings and otherwise.

P.S:

The last film watched was 21. Reminiscent of Ocean's 13.

About Dying Lakes and Bored Being (and her unsensible mutterings)

Deepor beel(a Ramsar site), one of the largest freshwater lakes in Northeast India and the home for many threatened species of birds and rich flora and fauna has been on the topic of discussion among many environmental enthusiasts. For the generations of fisherman community, who have been dwelling in the villages in and around the beel and who are largely depended on the this wetland as their the major source of livelihood, the threat is felt most acutely.


No, I'm not going to write a report accounting how terrible things are gradually turning out to be (particularly concerning everything related with the environment). I'm just giving away my experience when one fine summer morning recently, I walked to the beel in the company of my dear friend K to see the wild expanse at an early hour. The decision was worth taking. The collage is composed of the very many pictures of the land and the lake captured by me.

The ride on the the boat swirling around the deep marshes and the wild grasses proliferating, along with the company of all the sounds that have become so unfamiliar here otherwise ( e.g the breezes, the splashing of the oars hitting the water surface, the birds and the insects still humming) and the scene:

The pelicans flying over head,

The farmers ploughing,

The goats and pigs busy with their business.

For some time everything was at a standstill. Frozen moments.

The oarsman had been very kind, he was just returning from his daily early morning (read:2 am) fish-hunts. On being asked about the birds and the lake over the years, all he said, "Things have changed, now there are so less birds here and the fishes, well.... The lake is shrinking."

The ride ended soon

As far as my life is concerned, things are pretty staid.

My days sum up with the variables thus mentioned below:
Varied music (have been getting my eardrums muffled with Simon & Garfunkel, Incubus, Travis, The Shins and Coldplay)
Empty everydays, (surfing is all I've been doing)
and occasional cinema (watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 8 1/2, a repeat of Bandidas and 27 Dresses)
The ultimate equation formed is not that satisfying .
The sudden and unpredictable rainy nights and the rearing long warm summer mornings are so not apt for feeling all spirited.

Varieties: VIGNETTES

Recently (or more properly), immediately after the exams, I went to Guwahati basically to achieve some subliminal form of unwinding (whatever I mean by that!). Well, what followed was a series of misadventures (Read: The bus, a night super, broke down in the middle of nowhere at 1.45 am. We somehow managed to get in the cabin of a bus that dropped us till Shillong where we got down at a friend's place to put up for the night.. er early morning).

The pictures posted here are mementos of one of the most beautiful places in India. I did not get to spend a considerable amount of time there but these images only makes you want more and these are nothing, really.

These flowers can be found trailing the entire quarter campus (and most other unguarded places all throughout Meghalaya). Oh! the magic you spin, the invisible perfumes emanating from your wild blossoms!

At 5.40 am, this is how the streets of Shillong bade us good bye.

Well, this picture was taken in the return journey while somewhere in Meghalaya, the bus was going through one of its rigorous 'Police Checking.'

A Tribute to "Failed Feelings"

This is exactly the fate of emotions when they run too high- they spill over. How to gather up and unwrap these feelings (treasured and kept in custody for so long) which are too accustomed to the darker corners ?

The fire that fed these feelings was thriving on the leftover heat but it was bound to get cold, like most other living things. The irony is that every time when she thought that the evening was about to give way to the dark night(at last), there arrived a singular note that would be enough to keep the fire of hope burning and let her continue with her dreams. But the one who should have felt the underpinnings of these hidden admiration failed to see through even after she had tried every possible way to make the emotions legible but this seemed to be one feat utterly impossible to be accomplished. She never knew she was so hard to read.

She has been always left ashore.

Life is simple if seen from one undisturbed angle, we make it complex and unruly, it seems. Her fault lies in the fact that she lives in a hyped world of her own where everything is so happy: happy thoughts, happy faces, happy dreams, fulfilled feelings. But the reality is severely simple. This note written as a tribute to her failed feelings (failed because it never saw the light of the day, failed because it means nothing to anybody, failed because she had no right to feel them, anyways) will be drifted away in the saline river of tears, may be. The words will get blurred but she is happy to see that other people are getting more reasons to smile and be happy. A part of her world thus survives with the collective collusion of other's happy sides. Not everyone is required to end up like her.

A banished angel treading on the path smeared with the blood of her own failed feelings that were never understood.

Another Farewell

It has not even been a year since we bade farewell to our seniors and the time for our farewell already came and went. Yesterday marked the official last day at the university.

Two years was a small span of time, but how much we learn, take in, consume, remember within these 2*365 days, how many memories collaborated to form some distinct tales. The not-so-haloed stairs leading to the older department till the sprawling new building, the (developmental) journey was amazing. The two years made all of us grow up, introducing me to varied kind of people and politics, emotions and antics and ultimately helped me in realising the importance of being nostalgic. Yearning for the sepia past, making me see that the bygone days are always so better (something which was, as yet, unknown, unexplored).

Unlike our senior's farewell, there was no breeze and rain. (I got some terrible blisters though, thanks to my two inches high heels and the walk without umbrellas under the cruel sun). So much for being reasonably reasonless.

It was an emotional occasion and in spite of myself, the tears did sneak through. I had all kinds of experience: the good, the bad and the ugly. But you end up remembering the better times: the journey, the endless chat on the balcony, the seat under the mango tree shade, the leaves trailing the entrance, the silent reading room, the jokes (terrible and proper) shared and blasted... these images did manage to create a montage in the crevices of the roving mind of mine.

These two years have helped me in gaining two very different but amazing people whom I can call friends (J&K) and also introduced me to some great 'teacher-friends'. Love you all.

The juniors were such an amazing discovery while some just made me die with laughter virtually, some were too nice to be true. Will miss most of you.

No, I'm not writing it after being overwhelmed with emotions but rather because I'm thankful for the two-year sojourn.

To quote Shakespeare:"All's well that ends well"

This marks a new beginning. The road is long and the journey, no doubt tiresome but who doesn't love newer beginnings...

I do.